William George Horner

William George Horner (9 June 1786 – 22 September 1837) was a British mathematician. Proficient in classics and mathematics, he was a schoolmaster, headmaster and schoolkeeper who wrote extensively on functional equations, number theory and approximation theory, but also on optics. His contribution to approximation theory is honoured in the designation Horner's method, in particular respect of a paper in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London for 1819. The modern invention of the zoetrope, under the name Daedaleum in 1834, has been attributed to him. Horner died comparatively young, before the establishment of specialist, regular scientific periodicals. So, the way others have written about him has tended to diverge, sometimes markedly, from his own prolific, if dispersed, record of publications and the contemporary reception of them. The eldest son of the Rev. William Horner, a Wesleyan minister, Horner was born in Bristol. He was educated at Kingswood School, a Wesleyan foundation near Bristol, and at the age of sixteen became an assistant master there. In four years he rose to be headmaster (1806), but left in 1809, setting up his own school, The Classical Seminary, at Grosvenor Place, Bath, which he kept until he died there 22 September 1837. He and his wife Sarah (1787?–1864) had six daughters and two sons. Although Horner's article on the Dædalum (zoetrope) appeared in Philosophical Magazine only in January, 1834, he had published on Camera lucida as early as August, 1815. Horner's name first appears in the list of solvers of the mathematical problems in The Ladies' Diary: or, Woman's Almanack for 1811, continuing in the successive annual issues until that for 1817. Up until the issue for 1816, he is listed as solving all but a few of the fifteen problems each year; several of his answers were printed, along with two problems he proposed. He also contributed to other departments of the Diary, not without distinction, reflecting the fact that he was known to be an all-rounder, competent in the classics as well as in mathematics.